True Patriot Love - What Canada Does Next About Gas Prices

00:00:00.000 okay paul well here we go here are the countries that have already cut fuel taxes got answering on

00:00:09.780 the uh the problems associated with the iran war brazil south africa ireland spain italy united

00:00:17.160 kingdom european union vietnam south korea japan all of those have already taken measure to rebate

00:00:26.440 in the form of a not even rebate they've slashed taxes on the gas yeah so when you go to the pump

00:00:31.900 you pay less because all the tax is gone yeah you know that was the pierre pauliev comment at the

00:00:37.440 end of the week where he said you know i have a plan to cut 45 cents a liter from your gas by

00:00:42.780 reducing the tax but you know mike i wanted to kind of jump in before we get there which is

00:00:47.300 which is a very interesting i've been following this as you know talking about oil and canada's

00:00:54.860 relationship with oil since the 50s and you know i had don gilmore on the show and he walked us

00:01:02.600 through kind of what a great episode it was a great episode and if he if anyone gets a chance

00:01:08.080 watch it because he goes through kind of 1973 the yom kippur war and the embargo that happened from

00:01:18.020 saudi arabia on oil and how the world was impacted just like now so and then basically in the 80s

00:01:26.260 after getting through that uh we uh started petro canada yeah and we actually did really well

00:01:34.320 yeah petro canada was a major accomplishment of our country right before norway even jumped into

00:01:41.700 it and now norway jumped into it at the same time and norway through its oil and other production

00:01:47.720 of energy, has become a powerhouse in the world, not only from their heritage fund that

00:01:56.340 they've amassed over a trillion dollars as a reserve in the country for rainy days such

00:02:03.540 as this, but they've went on to do amazing projects around the world.

00:02:07.520 So PetroCanada was there.

00:02:09.460 But I'm going to step back because you know my background is a CPA.

00:02:14.180 So I was a CPA years ago.

00:02:15.700 They called them CAs, but that's how old I am before they amalgamated all the accountants.

00:02:20.420 And, you know, I worked for one of the big three firms, which was a very interesting scenario.

00:02:26.860 So in my career, I was lucky enough to do something which was a new product being offered, which is called risk assessment.

00:02:35.780 Right. So we used to bring people and this was before, you know, technology had hit its apex like it has now.

00:02:42.800 We used to come into a room.

00:02:44.440 We used to hardwire a bunch of computers together, HPs.

00:02:48.980 We used to sit all these executives from major corporations around a table,

00:02:53.700 and we used to ask them 100 questions about the risk of their products, services, and their company.

00:03:00.580 Okay.

00:03:01.180 Right?

00:03:01.500 It was very interesting.

00:03:02.400 Yeah, it seemed like a legitimate way to assess a company for investment or lending.

00:03:07.920 It was a great product.

00:03:09.080 Quite frankly, we sold it to a lot of firms, and I did a couple of the sessions.

00:03:12.440 So we used to get together and we used to ask these questions.

00:03:15.900 What materials will impact your business the most if they go away?

00:03:20.440 What labor impacts will occur if you had a strike?

00:03:25.660 So we used to ask all these questions.

00:03:28.300 And people, the executives from the firms, the C-suite, used to get together and they used to rank what they thought their biggest risks were.

00:03:37.900 Now, straight or her moose, I'm going to jump forward a little bit.

00:03:40.860 Canada, North America, the U.S., everyone, you know, we have oil reserves. So yeah, we should

00:03:49.480 have spotted this as a weak point. If I'm in China, quite frankly, I had to think this was a

00:03:55.060 huge weak point. And if I'm in all the other countries that are, a lot of them you just

00:04:00.600 mentioned, that are now cutting prices and rationing and doing such, you had to think that

00:04:07.060 somewhere around the government tables their ministers of energy were coming back to their

00:04:15.060 cabinets and saying hey i think we might have a problem here yeah right i think this might be an

00:04:20.440 issue so now i'm sitting there on the weekend i'm watching you know over easter i'm watching all

00:04:26.920 these dots on the screen as they're showing the traffic in the street if you've had a chance to

00:04:31.760 look at that you'll know what we mean if not you'll want to take a look at one of the traffic maps

00:04:36.460 that show the tankers through the area,

00:04:40.280 through the Strait of Hormuz,

00:04:43.460 but also throughout the Persian Gulf.

00:04:46.060 It's outstanding to watch this thing.

00:04:48.740 But right now, there's a cluster of dots, of course,

00:04:51.440 at one end of the Strait of Hormuz.

00:04:53.560 Yeah, and they show these dots kind of slowly moving on the screen.

00:04:57.300 Here's how crazy this is, Mike.

00:04:59.920 The strait at its narrowest point is 20 kilometers wide, nautical.

00:05:06.460 right that's very small with these tankers not only that but what's the depth i think only a

00:05:14.100 portion of that has the depth that many of these tankers require so two roughly two miles or you

00:05:22.720 know are uh 80 meters or more deep because the tankers are so big they got to be deep so they

00:05:31.800 only dredged really two miles worth of uh lanes for these ships to pass so the what you're saying

00:05:42.920 is the whole world's bottleneck on oil is roughly held up by 20 kilometers of straight that are

00:05:54.760 impassable unless it's unless you're authorized to go unless there's traffic yes being let through

00:06:01.240 So think about it, right?

00:06:02.820 This is literally like a marathon wide for like runners, roughly.

00:06:08.040 And probably, you know, someone could run from one side to the other in a couple hours.

00:06:14.160 Yeah.

00:06:15.080 Yeah.

00:06:16.080 And how much of the world's oil?

00:06:18.720 30%, 40% of the world's oil, and sometimes depending on the market, even higher.

00:06:23.360 Yeah, they say 20%.

00:06:24.600 They're using 20%.

00:06:26.080 But think about this.

00:06:27.540 How would anyone in their right mind from any country who's pricing for its key resource not identify this as a risk and figure out a contingency plan?

00:06:38.000 And how did any of these EU states, these Saudi states, how did they not figure out they should run another pipeline?

00:06:46.140 At some point, you think, okay, I'm investing in these high-tech companies in the U.S.

00:06:50.860 I'm making all this money.

00:06:52.660 Oh, I might have a risk here.

00:06:54.300 If something breaks out, I should build a protected pipeline somewhere to make sure.

00:07:00.820 Now, one country did it.

00:07:02.440 Yeah.

00:07:02.900 Saudi Arabia did it.

00:07:04.120 And under much protest from their own people, they built a very, what could be a very vibrant savior for them in the sense that they can actually bring and ship oil still.

00:07:19.180 However, those routes are not, or if you're American, routes are not laid out yet as shipping lanes.

00:07:27.380 So they will still have to arrange for new shipping lanes to new ports.

00:07:31.820 So it's not an instant fix.

00:07:34.860 But you're right.

00:07:35.500 How the hell did we ever end up in a position where somebody thought, oh, my goodness, okay, we've got basically 25 kilometers of straight that bends all over the place, full of rocks.

00:07:47.240 We're dredging it.

00:07:48.540 20% of the world's oil at the very minimum is going through it.

00:07:52.020 Should we not start to come up with a backup plan?

00:07:54.440 Not to mention that the state that is running the Strait of Homoose is not really a stable state on the global economy.

00:08:06.260 They don't really give a great amount of confidence that there's safety in that region already.

00:08:12.660 yet all of our oil 20 of all of that oil goes through that same pathway which doesn't come to

00:08:19.320 us as canadians but impacts the price of our gas so 50 000 vessels uh go through the straight

00:08:27.460 annually roughly wow so the traffic when you see all those dots moving right 365 days 50 000

00:08:34.600 vessels these are massive vessels so we're going to put on the screen take a look at some of these

00:08:38.960 images one of the reasons and this is kind of interesting and i i think this has been strategic

00:08:43.680 in this uh conflict war that they've not shown us this quite frankly because they don't want us to

00:08:49.400 criticize how dumb this is because when you look at it you see these massive uh uh tankers moving

00:08:56.860 through this straight really going one by one through this two mile path and these really crude 0.93

00:09:05.580 markers to keep them off the rocks and the shallow lines and then you see what would you call the

00:09:11.480 renegade ships yeah that go ships the pirate ships that run in the shallow water and they're going up

00:09:18.920 beside them outside of the markers that's right they'll take the outside lane and make their way

00:09:24.520 with you know and it's a risk it's a huge risk but if they make it then it's a big payday for

00:09:29.220 the countries they're delivering to yeah now you know my father used to say he said shake your head 0.95

00:09:34.840 when i did something stupid so i'm saying to these guys whoever let this go on should shake 0.99

00:09:40.560 their head at this point this is really dumb like whoever didn't whoever didn't predict this as a 0.99

00:09:46.440 risk quite frankly and why so now jump to canada for a minute why we're thinking that our gas 0.98

00:09:54.960 should be impacted by such a dumb decision to become reliant on this straight i have no idea

00:10:01.520 i have no idea why someone didn't say why does western texas crude sweet crude oil pricing 0.86

00:10:09.680 impacted by yeah why i i don't i still can't get a good answer and they say well global

00:10:18.720 what's because you can sell it somewhere so you've had a relationship with canada for all these years

00:10:24.560 for 50 some odd 60 years and now because something's happened in this kind of really

00:10:30.400 odd straight that quite frankly should have never been relied on you're now going to change the

00:10:36.000 pricing to me oh that's not a good partnership not even the pricing the whole pricing schematic

00:10:41.900 change yeah within hours of this but you raise a good point we base uh on uh west texas sweet crude

00:10:49.300 yeah has nothing to do with the middle east has nothing to do with uh pricing um in in north

00:10:56.220 america yet we we seem to be beholden to it and now our reaction here on the ground in canada

00:11:02.420 uh not like that in other countries where we're slashing uh taxes so here's what carney's doing

00:11:10.220 instead he's increasing oil production what oil production i guess well in the lines we have in

00:11:18.480 the pipelines we have i guess we're gonna yeah i guess we're gonna ask them to increase okay i

00:11:24.360 Maybe, I guess.

00:11:25.260 And then we'll do what with that crude?

00:11:28.140 Ship it to the U.S.

00:11:29.240 And then we'll do what once it's in the U.S.?

00:11:31.840 Nothing.

00:11:32.320 The pricing is still the same because it's based on the West Texas Sweet Crude Index.

00:11:38.580 I'm not a CA, but maybe I'm wrong.

00:11:41.840 But if you send more fuel down there to be priced at a higher level than it should be,

00:11:47.460 we're going to pay more for it up here, not less.

00:11:51.280 No, it'll ship somewhere else.

00:11:52.460 you know honestly that'll be the that'll be the threat you know if you don't want to pay what i

00:11:56.640 can get in the open market i'll ship it i'll put it on a tanker here and i'll ship it to another

00:12:01.080 country so you know i'll make it'll make its way over to europe somewhere right now he's saying no

00:12:06.860 tax cuts but he will consider doing rebates on things like groceries and fuel now let me just

00:12:14.880 touch on groceries for a second if you're sending me a rebate on groceries now because of fuel and

00:12:21.620 not before because of the greed of the grocery magnates i don't know what to say to you what

00:12:27.620 what are you doing i think there's a double rebate associated with this maybe because we weren't doing

00:12:32.580 it before why would you make it look like we're making groceries more available to canadians

00:12:37.460 because we're offsetting the price of gas we needed that before this happened well and and

00:12:42.180 this is always the one where if you make below this income you're going to get a rebate of x that

00:12:47.380 That's right. I'm getting the rebate and you're not. So the rebate warning is that they won't fix the problem anyway. So he's even saying, I'm going to consider rebates, but it's not going to fix our problem long term.

00:13:01.420 So even the even the prime minister's office is recognizing that no matter what we do at this moment, cutting taxes, doing rebate, none of it is going to be good for the country because we have to either print that money, allocate it from the budget from someplace else and cut it.

00:13:17.500 Or we have to do something about pricing our own oil, which is an impossibility because it's priced through our neighbors south of the border.

00:13:25.640 We're kind of in a position where many countries are not right now.

00:13:28.760 if we did need help oh one last thing we've written legislation you might have heard of

00:13:34.380 that is based on carbon right yeah the main reason why we're not doing it the main reason

00:13:41.440 it's a liberal policy we can't go back on the policy that says we'll reduce the price

00:13:47.060 of tax on gas because it will increase the use of carbon-based fuels yeah i don't know what to say

00:13:55.140 that paul well i i don't know what to say either but quite frankly the opposition the official

00:14:01.300 opposition uh pierre comes in and he says you know what my idea is to cut it by 45 cents to

00:14:08.640 follow the other nations and reduce the gas tax fine where's the money going to come from so where

00:14:16.140 so that you know that's fine i understand that that blows an enormous hole right in the heart

00:14:21.640 of our nation well so then i said okay so 45 cents a liter it's interesting you know then this is

00:14:28.720 political spin that sounds oh 45 cents a liter that'd be great yeah i'm happy with that that'll

00:14:34.920 take i think i filled up on the weekend i filled my truck up it was empty it was 200 to fill my

00:14:40.400 truck up oh my god so i filled my truck up so that'll take my fill of my truck back to like

00:14:46.340 150 so save me 50 bucks oh yeah that's great right but what he doesn't tell you that's going

00:14:52.220 to leave a hole guess what the hole is going to be 10 billion dollars so i went back and i took

00:14:58.220 oh my god okay let's dig through so federally gas tax uh equates to about 5 billion annually

00:15:06.380 provincially in ontario it's 2.4 billion quebec is 1.8 billion bc is 1.2 billion alberta is about

00:15:13.980 point nine billion and all the other provinces and territories is one billion so roughly 10

00:15:19.720 billion dollars so you got to find 10 billion dollars now we went through the budget show mike

00:15:24.900 where are you going to find 10 billion dollars ukraine yeah i guess yeah i guess you could

00:15:32.360 well there's half of it right there that's true you know we just did housing we just gave 8.8

00:15:37.680 billion to housing so but yeah i guess you could but then you know you're right to your

00:15:43.800 point there is no allocation for this is something that i think that we need to think about also from

00:15:48.780 a risk uh analysis i love the risk analysis idea we need to do more of this yeah we should do one

00:15:54.720 as a nation and give it to them why don't we we'll present one yeah but uh what occurs to me is that

00:16:01.200 the risk analysis has not included we might have a rainy day we might have a problem politically

00:16:08.280 in the world we don't have any means of fortifying ourselves because we don't have any production

00:16:14.640 because we don't manufacture because we don't have an export product that makes a huge amount

00:16:19.300 of money because we don't tap our resources because we sold petro canada yeah there's there's

00:16:24.700 a trillion dollars potentially right there yeah because we sold a company that actually

00:16:28.780 We drilled and refined our major resource.

00:16:36.140 Yeah, and made it possible for us to have gas

00:16:38.420 at an incredible price and still make money.

00:16:41.020 Yeah, no, we don't do that anymore.

00:16:42.800 So in light of that, we don't have the rainy day fund

00:16:46.340 that Norway has.

00:16:48.280 Imagine we had a trillion dollars right now

00:16:50.280 spending power in the world.

00:16:52.120 We could give a rebate.

00:16:53.960 We could give a rebate.

00:16:55.060 We wouldn't have a deficit.

00:16:57.280 We'd have a surplus.

00:16:58.080 Right. And quite frankly, we wouldn't be stalling giving, you know, we're not doing our budgeting now till the fall again. We wouldn't be deferring our budgeting process, trying to wait to see what the US was going to do and what everyone else was going to do. We'd be taking some money out of that reserve fund, using that to offset the $10 billion loss and give us a couple years to carry on.

00:17:21.580 And, you know, quite frankly, I think that company Equinor on previous shows was doing about $20 to $30 billion a year in net income.

00:17:30.920 So quite frankly, we wouldn't even have to dig into the reserves, Mike.

00:17:34.140 We could actually live off the money that that company makes to pay off and reduce our gas, which probably, to tell you the truth, we probably never would have had gas tax.

00:17:45.560 I was going to say.

00:17:46.960 We would have never had gas tax because we would have started the company to produce our own gas, to reduce it.

00:17:52.180 But these are just policy decisions we keep making when it comes to oil that are horrifically bad, that politicians based on four-year terms make for votes.

00:18:07.200 You know, I'm sure Mulroney thought, I'm sure Mulroney thought, oh, this is great.

00:18:11.020 We got to get rid of it.

00:18:11.940 You know, Petro Canada is a bloated fat agency and I can sell it off and use that to reduce a bunch of money at the time so I can make another term.

00:18:21.400 I'm sure that's what they thought. Yeah. Yeah. Good long term decision. Absolutely not.

00:18:26.660 I think they thought it was going to affect the commodities market and in our favor and drive the price and value of the company up at the time.

00:18:33.500 And it didn't. It just made it look like we were abandoning the world and leaving all these projects behind.

00:18:38.860 So this is interesting.

00:18:41.420 I think we need to be aware of something at this moment. 0.85

00:18:45.360 This is a good time for Mark Carney to bury other problems underneath Iran. 0.87

00:18:51.860 Taxation is a big one. 0.76

00:18:53.860 Food supply is another one.

00:18:56.240 Food cost is another one.

00:18:57.760 It's going to be real easy for our government right now to blame what's happening in our country on other things.

00:19:07.880 Sure.

00:19:07.960 I want to remind us, we were here before, it's just going to get worse now.

00:19:13.720 Yeah, of course.

00:19:14.400 And he can't hide behind the war, he can't hide behind COVID this time.

00:19:19.080 We need to be aware of what the government is doing at all times through this,

00:19:22.760 because otherwise we're going to hear that it was caused by outside problems,

00:19:28.180 and we will never address the inside issues.

00:19:31.080 Sure, it was the tariffs, and now it's gas prices based on Iran,

00:19:37.260 and what's next you know we just keep going there will be something next there will be something

00:19:42.280 next but you know reducing the gas tax it's an option but it's not a long-term option it's a

00:19:49.060 short term we can't fill that hole we can't move forward with that happening so the the answer is

00:19:54.900 what do we do now and the with respect to gas we need to go back and we look at need to look at a

00:20:00.960 model where we refine for our own nation we need to get back into the oil business i've said this

00:20:07.040 on previous shows and i know people like oh you know i can't believe we're going to do that again

00:20:11.500 what has government ever done efficiently well i tell you what government did a lot uh really

00:20:17.800 efficiently efficiently back then they did a tremendous amount of things they built a company

00:20:23.120 that was actually uh world renowned that was out there doing other projects and other nations on

00:20:31.440 the oil and gas side it lit up the north sea yeah or we wouldn't even be there looking for gas

00:20:36.920 But now we've sold it off. We're totally dependent on Canadian and U.S. firms to come in and take our oil and use it for whatever they want to use it.

00:20:46.400 We're dependent on the pricing models that aren't even in our own country when the natural resource comes from here.

00:20:54.220 Yeah, I don't know. We're stuck in the Strait of Hormuz for some reason, but the truth is we're stuck in our own mud right here.

00:21:00.380 Exactly. The straight of her moves is, honestly, I call squirrel, you know, because quite frankly, that's what we're doing. We're looking over there. We're not addressing the issue we have. We should sit down and talk about it. And that's something, quite frankly, Kuzma's coming up. I know we don't talk about it. And I know because of Alberta and their rumblings and everything going on down there, we don't want to talk about this issue. We have to talk about this issue. We have to get into this issue. We got to de-layer it. We got to find out why.

00:21:28.260 We got to figure out how to make Alberta happier so they can find their way.

00:21:34.420 But quite frankly, we also have to go back to Alberta and we have to say, listen, I know you have a bunch of U.S. companies, a bunch of U.S. influences there.

00:21:41.900 We need to sit down and talk to them about what our trading relationship is going forward that ties to the big ball of wax.

00:21:47.980 because now with i with iran uh potentially tomorrow you know we talked about another show

00:21:54.600 uh going away and the u.s having to retreat if they don't go forward with what they're saying

00:21:59.620 we are a bigger trading partner now we're more essential to the success of the united states

00:22:05.780 we need to open up our market we need to be prepared to open up our market i don't know

00:22:10.040 where the money comes from to build that infrastructure but if we don't do it this

00:22:14.040 time if we don't do it now when the hell are we going to do it well and you know we can't keep

00:22:20.240 slipping one of the things that we we could have done right now which if we were in the right

00:22:25.000 situation if we would have kept petro canada we would have been a unique opportunity to reduce

00:22:30.160 our production costs so when the rest of the world was going up in gas prices and increasing

00:22:34.620 the prices of their goods and services we could have went the other way and got a competitive

00:22:39.660 advantage which then would have helped us in our lagging productivity listen it's no it's no lie

00:22:45.180 we are 30 to 40 percent less efficient productivity wise we are less productive than americans by a

00:22:51.420 long we are slipping out of the developed nations when it comes to output per labor or per hour

00:22:57.900 with respect to productivity we're number i think we're number 32 out of 32 right now and we're

00:23:03.900 estimated to fall out of the developed nations by 2030 yeah so like would have been a great

00:23:11.620 opportunity now to take advantage of this opportunity you're only going to get something

00:23:15.900 like this so many times in a lifetime we could have leapt ahead and figured out a way to to at

00:23:22.140 least become uh more productive and get goods into into marketplaces that we don't currently

00:23:28.600 get them don't rebate rethink exactly that's what we need an entire retool exactly go back to each

00:23:35.880 of your markets figure out a way don't give the rebate to the people i know people are going to

00:23:40.600 boo but you know what those are short-term solutions find a way to give the rebates to the

00:23:46.920 the industries that need them to get more productive and reduce their cost to get to market

00:23:53.720 and then you have a strategy that's where we should be but i don't think we're there the

00:23:57.320 The problem is, you know, we have this conversation, the 45 cents comes up, he discounts it.

00:24:03.360 The other one says, just cut tax.

00:24:05.600 No one goes away and puts this strategy together.

00:24:07.440 And that's why in the next few days, whatever happens in the world, whatever happens with oil, is going to cause a real big rethink on this.

00:24:16.220 I really think we should have Mark Carney come in and explain this to us.

00:24:19.060 I'd love to.

00:24:19.920 Prime Minister Carney.

00:24:21.680 Thanks, Paul.

00:24:22.460 Thanks.

00:24:27.320 patriotic means looking up for each other and fixing things together true patriotism is being

00:24:36.880 in the country you love surrounded by people you love and great weather being a patriot is being

00:24:41.620 a part of your community and caring for it it doesn't matter who you are or where you're from

00:24:45.780 patriotism is the one thing we all share it's okay to be critical of government and still be

00:24:52.180 patriot it's gratitude to your country of course i'm a patriot i'm canadian it's my home well

00:24:58.180 actually true patriot love is the mission

True Patriot Love - April 10, 2026

What Canada Does Next About Gas Prices

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